Review: The Family

The Family by Naomi Krupitsky
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Many reviewers call this book "historical fiction," and I would like to know why? History takes a back seat to the relationships in this book. As a matter of fact, any kind of story takes a back seat to the relationship between these two seemingly mentally incapacitated women (at least that's what their inner-dialoguing makes it feel like).

This was the most boring piece of angsty nonsense I have ever read. I had so been looking forward to this book. I didn't think this would be a shoot-em-up, but I felt that we would meet at least some of the other family members, especially the other wives. We did not. So nothing much happens. Well, at least until the last maybe, a quarter of the book.

Now things get a little more interesting with Book 5; yes, this entire book is divided into 'books.' Things do pick up but in such a literary and dreamy way that you don't get the full impact.

I cannot believe that I stuck with this book until the end just to see if SOMETHING, ANYTHING would happen. Thank goodness for libraries -I should have wondered why the waiting list for this book wasn't longer.

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SYNOPSIS: "In the vein of an American Elena Ferrante, a captivating debut novel about the tangled fates of two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn.

Two daughters. Two families. One inescapable fate.

Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, a loud, untamed thing. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends from birth, their homes share a brick wall and their fathers are part of an unspoken community that connects them all: the Family. Sunday dinners gather the Family each week to feast, discuss business, and renew the intoxicating bond borne of blood and love.

Until Antonia’s father dares to dream of a different life and goes missing soon after. His disappearance drives a whisper-thin wedge between Sofia and Antonia as they become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison made up of expectations, even as they remain bound to one another, their hearts expanding in tandem with Red Hook and Brooklyn around them. One fateful night their loyalty to each other and the Family will be tested. Only one of them can pull the trigger before it’s too late.